(Video) Douglas Murray On 'The Strage Death Of Europe'

 


British author and lecturer Douglas Murray has a recent bestseller out called "The Strange death of Europe. Here he is talking about the book and the ideas it presents at David Horowitz's Restoration Weekend. A transcript is below.




Douglas Murray: I'm only going to speak for about 15 minutes because I wanted as much time as possible for Q&A, because I sense that there hasn't been much, so far, and because I'm always very excited about hearing other people's views and questions. But let me start by making a few remarks.

The first, by the way, is that I'll talk a little about my recent book. It's always rather difficult to understand another country, let alone another continent, or another culture. There are things you have in common. There are things which seem bizarre, when you look at them from outside, and there are things that look recognizable. There are things that rhyme. There are an enormous number of similarities between where I'm from and where most of you are from, and an enormous number of differences too. I've been in the states a week, spoken at a campus, and was on the West Coast at the beginning of the week, and I had one of those disassociation moments in San Francisco, when I had been in my second day in the city, and I just noticed that absolutely everywhere, there seemed to be posters advertising delivery services for marijuana. And I thought this is interesting because if there's one thing it seems to me that San Francisco doesn't need it's easier access to marijuana. More of it, just so that people who smoke it don't even have to go down the street. But there are lots of similarities between our societies as well, and one of the, I suppose, most gratifying things since the "Strange Death of Europe" came out in June here in the U.S. is the number of people who have come over to me and written to me from America, from Canada, from Australia, and said this book is about us isn't it? And, perhaps I could stop by just saying a little about what it is about, and you'll get some of the resonances.

The "Strange Death of Europe" centers on the 2015 migration crisis, which you all remember was the moment when Angela Merkel massively exacerbated an already existing problem by announcing, unilaterally, that the external and internal borders of Europe were basically dissolved. In a single act, the mass movement of people that had been going on for decades sped up exponentially, so that Germany in a single year took in an additional 2 percent of its population. Sweden took in an additional almost 3 percent of its population. This is all part of a pattern. I say that has been going on for many decades. And, just like those previous decades, what happened after the 2015 crisis was that politicians and the media found excuses to justify something that would have happened anyway. So, for instance, German citizens and others were told that this mass migration, millions of people into Europe, was there would be a net economic gain for their society, that it would enrich their society. Now, actually, all of the studies that I have gone over on this show that, at best, most such migration cannot be called to be any kind of economic gain. A study in Britain showed that over a 15 year period, migrants took out 95 billion more in services than they put in taxation. And, of course they would. If you go to another country, you don't speak the language. You don't have the skills. It's going to be a very long time, before you've put in anything into the welfare system, remotely like the amount that you and your family will have taken out. But, this is one of the arguments that is made.

And, by the way, just as in all of the decades after the war, so in the post-2015 moment, the governments that came up with these explanations had to hedge around the facts, so that just like the labor government, after 1997, they had to pretend that the average migrant was a Luxemburgian hedge funder. And this is just one of the lies that gets told to the people, because once that one is shut down, once, for instance, you notice that the number of people who have been added to Germany's welfare bill in the last year, is almost exactly the number of the people who came in in 2015, once you go over that lie, you get to another one, which the German people and others were told; which is that we are an aging population. We are a graying population, and then, therefore, we need, obviously, to bring people in, to keep us and our society into the standards to which we've become accustomed. Of course, this argument always ignores one extraordinary thing, which none of the politicians ever seem to recognize, which is the startling fact that migrants get old as well. Amazingly enough, it's not just us Europeans who suffer the aging process. Who knew? But, of course, if you do believe in that idea, that you need to keep on bringing people to keep yourself in the custom that you're now used to, you get, what I describe as, the pyramid problem in migration. You keep having to bring in more and more people all the time, to keep yourselves in that sustainable societal moment.

So once you get the one of, well, okay maybe they don't make us richer. Maybe the aging population thing doesn't work. You get to another one, which is diversity. It doesn't matter if we're financially poorer. It doesn't matter, because we're so much more culturally rich. Now, I should say that there is something in this. What society -- Europeans certainly wouldn't do this. What society doesn't want to know as much of interest and culture as the world has to offer? Who doesn't want to know as much about the world, and about the ideas of the world as possible? But, of course, the first person from, for instance, India to bring Indian cuisine into the U.K., does an interesting service. Vins up the local cuisine. It's not the case that the next 100 Indians who come, for instance, bring a hundred times more interesting cuisine. It's not the case that the first Sudanese poet who enters the U.K. massively brings interest to your country and that the next thousand people from Sudan continue to just bring ever richer versions of the poetry of Sudan. And, by the way, please don't ask me to name my favorite Sudanese poet. But, this is just a part of that lie. They all say – You also notice, by the way, that this is always a one way street. Not once in my adult life have I heard anybody say that the thing that Eritrea needs an injection of Welshman. That they just could do with some Welsh cooking or singing. Nobody says this. Nobody says, as Mark Steyn and I were saying in a conversation recently, nobody says the thing that the Somalis really need is a bit more Bach. I actually think it would be nice for them if they had a bit more Bach. But nobody thinks that's an appropriate way to say it. But Europeans are told there's something hollow at our heart. As if we in Europe, the culture of Dante and Gerter and Bach, has some kind of diminishment; something hollow at its center that needs filling by the world.

And then you get to another stage in this, which is, okay, maybe it doesn't make you richer. Maybe the aging population thing does fall apart. Maybe the diversity thing isn't all it's cracked up to be or, as I put it at one point in my book, maybe we just have to do an agreement this is a quid pro quo. We have a bit more gang rape and beheading than we used to have, but then there's a wider range of cuisines. So, who's to – life's all swings and roundabouts.

But, then you get to the last stage of that, which is the one that politicians now say and speak to us about. Which is, okay, maybe none of these things are the case. We'll suck it up. This is globalization. This is going to happen anyway. This is a hell of a way to speak to the general public about their and their children's future. And, it is only said, once again, to the peoples of Europe in this tone.

So, I explained, at great length, not just the stats and the result of my travels across, not just all of Europe, but many of the countries that migrants have been coming from, trying to explain in as much detail and with as much honesty as possible, the reality of the situation that my continent now faces. But also to explain the deeper, underlying reasons why this might be happening. Because, it seems to me that what I describe as the "strange death of Europe," I say in the opening line, "Europe is committing suicide or, at least, its leaders have decided to commit suicide." Whether the publics agree to go along with that, or not, is another matter. Now, this strange death, this suicide, seems to me to be a very unnatural thing to happen in nature. And, so there must be, and I posit that there are deeper underlying reasons for it. One is what I described, taking it from the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner, as the Tyranny of Guilt. This overwhelming guilt, specifically, the German guilt that has spread across the continent in the decades since the war. You, of course, in America have a very clear version of this, yourself. Just as we, in Europe now, have this myth of original sin, so you now have it in America; the original sin of slavery, the original sin of racism, and the European versions of the original sin of colonialism, and so on. Again, it's a one-way movement.

And, of course, we fall for it, as everybody who has children and grandchildren, or has attended an American campus in recent years, knows. If you say to a student, and I do it quite often, what is your solution for, for instance, the problems that Nigeria currently faces? They have no solutions. They have no suggestions. Very few of them can point to the country on a map. But, the one thing they all can be sure about is, at some point, it must have been their or their ancestor's fault. The fastest fast tract to look like you're a knowledgeable young person is to blame yourself and your own society. And, as I say at another point in the book, we get to the big problem the masochists always risk, which is what happens to them when they meet a real sadist? And Europe is meeting a real sadist. So you think you're appalling, empty, barren, rubbish, guilty. We agree. This seems to me to be the worst possible concatenation of events. The mass movement of peoples into a society. Then, at the point that that society appears to have lost its own faith in itself, this two of the other big underlying issues I raise in the book, are what I call, firstly, the sense of European tiredness. There's a German word I use that translates roughly as "tiredness with history" or "weariness with history," where you've gone so many of the wars of religion, the wars of nation and states, the wars of ideas, the political dreams, that you're just tired of it all, and at that point, a change might be as good as a rest. And, then there's what I describe as the sense that the story may have run out, and that this is just our fate, to go through.

Now, I'm very weary and wary, rather, about making predictions. I do, at the end of the book, say roughly two directions I think this could go. But, specific predictions, I tend to avoid. After all, we live in a world where Harvey Weinstein can end up causing the resignation of a British defense minister. So who knows what the rules of causality are in this world we now live in. But, there are some predictions that you can make. One, that it's fairly obvious that Europe will not be the same place with different people in it, and that it isn't the case that people who just walk into a continent immediately absorb all the ideas of that continent. And the subtitle of my book is immigration, identity and Islam; that the Islam bit matters because it's clearly proving for Europe to be the part that we may not be able to digest or are finding it, at the very least, very hard to digest. And, you know there are all sorts of motifs that go around on this. One, is the constant claim that there might, at some point, be a tipping point. I've given up claiming that there is such a thing as tipping point. If we'd had met this time last year, and you said to me there'll be three major terrorist attacks in your country in the opening months of the year, I'd have probably said, well that might be the tipping point. But, it turns out that 22 young women killed on a Monday night at the pop concert in Manchester, within hours the motif becomes, how can we have love rather than hate? How can we overcome hate? Hate, hate, hate. Sing John Lennon's Imagine. Imagine there's no borders. Great idea. For then we had one of the Gallagher Brother's songs. A song called Don't Look Back in Anger. People started crooning away, Don't Look Back in Anger. Why not? Why not? You know, we had the love, love, stop the hate concert, I think two weekends after the Manchester area bombing, and there was a bit of that was sad, and then they got onto all the dancing and boogying. They didn't pay any attention. The media didn't pay attention to the fact the dead hadn't even been buried. There were still girls in hospitals having bits of bolts and nails taken out of their spines. Well, at least we've moved on. It didn't get us down. Boogey on. And I deeply resent this tone, and I suspect and know that a great number of the members of the public in Europe deeply dislike it too.

The reception of this book, by the way, has been rather startling. The Guardian and The New York Times both tried to snuff this out at birth and didn't succeed. It's now the bestselling non-fiction book of the year. In the U.K., it's been a top – I'm not after applause for it. But, yes, the publisher said that, actually, their quarterly reports were far higher than they expected, because of me and Harry Potter, which was not a combination I'd ever thought would come about, but my mother had told me for a long time that it would be worth getting into books about wizards, because it was good for sales. So, I was pleased to say I got there without the wizards. And, the best thing, really, has been the number of publishers that have been sidling up to me, since saying things like, "I told my bosses we should do something in this area." One publisher in the U.K. said to me that their boss, after my book had been at the top of the bestseller list for 20 weeks, said that their boss said to them, "Well, we don't want those readers." Hmm, love his shareholders to know that.

But, anyway, for the time being continued this period of keep-calm-and-carryon-ism or ignoring the facts. But, at some point, they will, inevitably, catch up with us, and that's what the latter part of my book is about. There are people, of course, who don't care at all about this. I spoke to somebody the other week who said, "Well, it doesn't matter to me because I won't be here." Among other things, that point of view breaks down what I regard as the essential pact of civilization, which is it is not just about you. But as Edmond Burke most famously and brilliantly said, that civilization is a pact between the dead and the living and those yet to be born. You have to hold that pact together, every bit of it, and to give it up and to break a part of that pact is to break everything that you should be loving and cherishing. Now, there are plenty of people, today, who are attacking us in Europe with genuine hate, just as there are here in America. But the one thing that they never take account of is that we are not just motivated in response by hatred and justified hatred, but also by love; love of everything that we hold dear, love of an entire culture, love of country, love of family, love of neighborhood, and love of everything that's gone before us, and that it would be the worst thing imaginable, if in response to having inherited that, we then handed on to the next generation, something that was unrecognizable. So, we have this gift in our power not to pass on something like a large version of Mogadishu to the next generation. It's in the balance there, in Britain, as it is here, and in the years ahead, we're all going to be walking through this same swamp. I'd like to hand it over to you for questions. Thank you.

I don't know whether there's a microphone or whether people with large lungs can just holler.

Audience Member: Yes, hello, Mr. Murray. Thank you very much for a great speech. I have one question sir. What do you believe is your prognosis for Eastern Europe; orthodoxy and the former Soviet Republics, Warsaw Pact? They're not as willing to embrace this multi-culturalism and this disease that affects Western Europe. What do you think is the prognosis for them?

Douglas Murray: Very good and very important question. I have a section in my book that I call "Why Eastern Europeans are Different." You're right. I was in Hungary, again, a couple of weeks ago. The Polish translation of my book just came out. I had been speaking there. They have a totally different view on this. I think there are lots of reasons, but the central one I suggest is that Eastern Europeans have retained, what a great Spanish philosopher described as, the tragic sense of life. The thing that we in Western Europe, and I think large numbers of people in America, have forgotten, is, as I said, the tragic sense of life. Life, as we have it now, is highly unusual, historically speaking. We're extraordinarily lucky with what we have, and we think that this luck goes on forever. The Eastern Europeans remember that differently. They get swept aside, from one side, and just as they get rid of that, they get swept aside from another. They got no time off from history, and they remember this. They remember that even the things you care about most can be destroyed, utterly, by people who are utterly unworthy of them. And, I think we've forgotten that in the West, but they have good reason to keep that memory. And, as a result, I think their future will be very different. Somebody else.

Audience Member: Thank you so much for being here today. Here in the United States there's also another line that we face which is, as we discuss the issue of immigration, particularly with respect to Muslim immigration, we were told we are a nation of immigrants and, particularly, ensuring aspects, for example, in the Jewish community, if it were not for the United States, we would not be here. My family would not be here. How do you go and address that particular core issue? We are a county with a history of welcoming others. We are welcoming the different people. I, of course, respond why welcome people that don't share your values?

Douglas Murray: It's a very important question. There are several things. There are two critiques to this book that I found interesting, but this one is one of the most interesting. Yes, America is a nation of immigrants. That's true. Of course, it's not true with Britain. And it's not true of most of Europe, actually. We've had very, very static populations, so that, to give you a quick example, everyone talks about Huguenots, French Protestants who came over in the 17th Century. Fifty thousand French Huguenots, French Protestants came over after 1683; 1681, sorry. And that, by the 1990s was an average of 6 weeks of migration into the UK.

So, we still talk about the Huguenots, which is a one-off. But that's going on all the time now. And, of course, the French Huguenots, French Protestants, had a better chance of integrating into Britain than, say, a Nigerian Muslim is going to.

And I think this is a question – this is not a science, but there are obvious truths that we have to be able to face up to, which is that some groups integrate better than others. And we have to work out what the general rules are. Now, where I'm from, as I say, this is a deeper problem than it is here. Your sense is that you have an integration success story; you still have the sense that it's a good thing to be in America and that you're lucky to be in America, and a lot of things like that. The response in Europe is very, very different on that.

And, I would say that one of the things you can agree with is, let's at least look at what the basic ground rules are. Okay? If I move to this country, for instance, I became a citizen, I might say, I want to bring some of my values. Imagine if I said to you, I would like to bring my car. Okay. You might think that's a rather odd thing to do, but okay. And my wheel would be on the other side from yours. You say, okay. Just a little quirk. He's a British guy. He likes driving on that side of it. But if I said, and I also want to continue to have the right to drive down the left-hand side, we'd have to talk about that, wouldn't we?

And that's what a lot of this is about. There are lots of groups here who feel very sensitive, by the way, when I talk about immigration in an American context. Because there are so many people here who think, like a lot of Jews do in Europe, oh, my gosh. What if this is about us? It's not about you. It's about the people who don't want to join the you. And that's a big challenge we're all going to have. Do I have time for one more question?

Audience Member: It's kind of been easy to get into the minds of the ruling elite, as far as this collective guilt, but how do you account for the phenomenon, I think it was in Nottingham, where you had blue-collar police who are actively suppressing the ongoing rapes of British girls by Muslims? How do you account for that? Is it equivalent to the concentration camp guards or how do you put it together?

Douglas Murray: Well, because they are trying to defend what they believe, rightly or wrongly, to be the religion of our time. Like all belief systems, it shatters in a very ugly fashion. But we've been trying to sustain a whole set of unsustainable ideas. One of them is this idea, as I say, that people don't bring their own ideas when they move into a culture. They're all the same the minute you walk over the border. You immediately get 21st Century ideas about women and everything else.

So, these policemen who are in this position, they're having to police that. And not just policing criminality or crimes; they're trying to police the culture. They're trying to hold together the whole thing. And I've spoken to many people who have gone through this cognitive dissonance. It's the same reason why in Britain at the moment, if your house gets burgled, if you get robbed in the street, it's very likely the police will tell you they don't have time to look into the crime. Whereas if, as some people present know, you send out a Tweet with the wrong tone of joke in it, they'll be all over you. So, as I say, this is just one part of the phenomenon.

Now, I'm aware that I've got Mike Finch standing to my left, which is usually a great pleasure, as always, but it also almost certainly signals a change in speaker. But can I just say, I've got to sadly go up to New York after this, and it's such a pleasure always to be here at Restoration. It's enormous pleasure to meet so many friends and to see so many heroes. Thank you for your time, and I hope to see you another year. Thank you.

Patrick Condell: The Invasion Of Europe

Patrick Condell in another classic commentary, this time on what he calls the invasion of Europe. As usual, he gets right to the heart of the matter.



As Patrick Condell points out, this is a self inflicted wound, and a particularly dangerous one for women, gays and Jews. And slowly but surely, the cost of keeping these 'refugees' many of whom remain on welfare is slowly bankrupting the EU. There's also the cost, both human and financial, of crime.

Will Europe eventually wake up and stop this slow suicide? Time will tell.

Pat Condell: Europe’s Betrayal of Women

As usual Pat Condell tells it like it is. Europe is literally in the process of becoming a place where women are prey.

(h/t The Right Planet)

'How Dare Those Jews Defend Themselves!'

Europe is once again showing its true colors.

In Paris, violent rioters predominantly from the city's restive Arab population attacked Jews on the streets and attempted to storm two synagogues over the weekend while worshippers were inside.

The worst incident took place at the Synagogue de la Roquette in Paris. Jews were besieged inside when a mob of Arab protesters pushed the five French police who were assigned to guard the synagogue and attempted to break into the building itself to get at the Jews inside.

French Jewish journalist Alain Azria, who was on the scene told the AFP that close to 200 congregants were insideas the protesters chanted anti-Semitic slogans and hurled objects at the synagogue.

“They were determined to enter and the police did not have enough forces,” he said.

According to Azria, what saved the Jews inside from serious injury and even death was men from the SPCJ Jewish security unit, the Jewish Defense League and Beitar, who engaged the attackers to defend the Jews. Six of the predominantly Arab protesters were arrested.

“Thank God they were there because the protesters had murder on their minds and it took a while before police reinforcements arrived,” Azria added. Three Jews were hospitalized, but a far worse carnage was avoided.

In Bellville, an eastern suburb of Paris, a pro-Hamas demonstration Saturday featured chants of “Itbah Al-Yahud” (“slaughter the Jews”).

On a Paris street near the main Gare du Nord train station, a Jewish 17-year-old girl was assaulted in broad daylight by a man described as being Arab in appearance when he sprayed pepper-spray in her her face. The girl, identified by her initials, J.L., wrote in her complaint to police that the man, who was in his 20s, shouted: “Dirty Jewess, inshallah you will die.”

There have been a number of reports of assaults against Jews throughout France.

In a separate incident occurred this Friday night, when the synagogue of Aulnay-sous-Bois, a northeastern suburb of the French capital, was packed with worshipers at the weekly Sabbath services. A firebomb went off at the entrance, and although no one was injured, the resulting fire damaged the synagogue.

 

Prime Minister Manuel Valls condemned the attempted synagogue attacks "in the strongest possible terms".

"Such acts targeting places of worship are unacceptable," he said in a statement.

Needless to say, French President Hollande is pushing for an immediate cease fire. He and the Socialists carried almost the entire Muslim vote in the elections, so he likewise could care less about Israel's security or Hamas shooting missiles at them beyond a perfunctory condemnation here and there. He's mainly interested in quiet and being able to financially support the new Hamas-Fatah reichlet.

And the protesters? Here's a typical statement from one, whom identified himself as Amid Hamadouch to the AFP.

"I came to say no to this massacre."

"They are bombing innocent people. There are missiles being launched by Hamas, but the Israeli response is disproportionate. They are attacking the civilian population and not Hamas officials."

What Amid had to say should be quite reveling to all of us, and especially to Jews. Amid and his friends , of course, were not out on the streets protesting or attacking Palestinian institutions when Hamas was launching missiles and mortar shells at Israel. He was fine with it.Nor does he care that those brave Hamas fighters he admires so much are using women and children as human shields, or that the IDF is doing everything it can to minimize civilian casualties.

Even more to the point, he and his compatriots aren't attacking Israelis, twisted in morality as that would be. They're attacking Jews. Because to them, they're one and the same. And if there was no Israel, Jews would still be targeted anyway. That's something a number of Jews who pat themselves on the back as 'anti-Zionists' or whom pride themselves on being critical of Israel ought to ponder.

The same message is being sent across Europe. It's time the Jewish communities in the Diaspora started paying attention.

 

European Parliament Outlaws Circumcision; Israel Calls It "A Moral Stain"

A resolution to outlaw male ritual circumcision, calling it a “violation of the physical integrity of children” was passed overwhelmingly by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

The Jewish rite of Brit Millah was compared in the resolution to the female genital mutilation (FGM) common in a number of Muslim and African countries,although no specific recommendations or resolutions condemning that practice or recommending that member states outlaw FGM was passed.

The resolution Called on member states to "adopt specific legal provisions to ensure that certain operations and practices will not be carried out before a child is old enough to be consulted,” which targets Jews specifically since only Jews ritually circumcise their male children when they are eight days old, symbolic of the Covenant of Abraham.

The State of Israel's Foreign Ministry was quick to respond:

"Circumcision of male children is an ancient religious tradition of two important religions, Judaism and Islam, and it is also common among some Christian circles," the Foreign Ministry staid in a statement.

"Any comparison of this tradition to the reprehensible and barbaric practice of female genital mutilation is either appalling ignorance, at best, or defamation and anti-religious hatred, at worst."

The resolution, the statement continued, is "an intolerable attack both on the respectable and ancient religious tradition that lies at the base of European culture, and on modern medical science and its findings. This resolution casts a moral stain on the Council of Europe, and fosters hate and racist trends in Europe. We call on the Council of Europe to act without delay in order to annul it."

The Israeli Foreign Ministry statement also said that the claims that circumcision harms the health of young boys are false and runs contrary to scientific evidence.

Needless to say, the European Parliament won't annul it.

My friend Carl has the right of it.

"Whenever the gentiles want to attack us, the first things they attack are circumcision, Torah study and ritual slaughter. Not necessarily in that order."

He's got that right.

Why Europeans Will Never Forgive The Jews For Auschwitz

 In yesterday's piece on the out of control rise in anti-semitic attacks in France, I referenced this essay I wrote back in 2006 on why Jews should seriously think about leaving most of Western Europe. After quoting it briefly and saying that there's very little of it I would change today, almost 7 years later, I finished by saying that a lot of Europeans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.

That phrase caught the attention of a couple of long time readers who asked what I meant (and in one case, took issue with it).

Here's exactly what I meant, and my explanation may perhaps be of some interest.

Simply stated, Hitler didn't operate in a vacuum. And it wasn't just Germans, as you find when you actually take a little time to study the Holocaust, a unique event in history for a number of reasons although to observe how it's constantly tossed around freely at every conceivable occasion you'd never know it.

Unlike America, Europe was historically and officially anti-semitic. While we certainly had and have Jew hatred here, it was never government sanctioned, it was never de jure, legal. As a matter of fact, George Washington and most of the rest of the Founders were almost philo-semitic. Washington even made the point of sending a remarkable letter to the congregants of the Truro Synagogue in Rhode Island ( first and largest in America) telling them that 'the children of Abraham' would be welcome to live in America in peace as full citizens. He was telling them they need not fear the political change would result in their having to pull up stakes again.

It was different in Europe.

To give you an idea of how remarkable Washington's letter of assurance  was, in 'enlightened' Britain, Jews had only been allowed to live there as recently as 1656, when Oliver Cromwell readmitted them after they had been expelled from England in the 13th Century. Even then, Jews were not allowed to serve in Parliament or in government positions until much later, 1829. They weren't legally allowed to live in Sweden until 1715, Norway until 1850, and not allowed for many years per se in Spain, Portugal, or any of their colonies in Africa or the New World after the expulsion of 1492. In places like the German states, Poland and Russia, their status was marginal and subject to the whims of whomever was in power. So George Washington's letter was a very big deal. It defined the entire relationship between Jews and the American Republic.

A lot of Jew hatred in Europe came courtesy of the Catholic Church and Martin Luther, whose history was somewhat like Mohammed's, believe it or not. In the beginning, Luther said a a great deal about tolerance and used the Church's anti-semitism as a talking point against them, figuring that the Jews would come flocking in to become Lutherans and Protestants. But like Mohammed, when most of the Jews said no thank you, he became one of the most violent anti-semites in history.

When Hitler came to power, Jew hatred was an established mainstream thread in a lot of Europe. There was no secret as to what was going in Germany during the 1930's but frankly, the people who gave a damn were in the minority...and that was by no means limited to Germans and Germany. Few countries would give German Jews visas to emigrate, unless they had influential friends or were someone like Einstein who might be useful.

That included America, by the way. Avowed Jew Haters like Father Coughlin were major public figures, the Ivy League had strict quotas on admitting Jews, and many neighborhoods, clubs and even hotels boasted covenants that barred Jews. The State Department, then as now, had a decent quotient of anti-semites and delayed and avoided issuing visas to Jews fleeing Germany even when they were available...although there were some Americans who risked quite a lot in order to do what they could, just as there were in other countries.

Britain did its bit to expand the death toll of the Holocaust by defying international law and the terms of the Palestine Mandate by closing off Palestine to all Jewish immigration in 1938, when Jews were desperately trying to flee. Needless to say, very few of them were welcome in Britain. Later, in 1944, the British stonewalled a deal Himmler offered to the allies to exchange a million Jews bound for the concentration camps for a few trucks, some soap, and some coffee.

As Hitler gained control of Europe, a number of countries reacted in surprising ways. Some countries (Finland, Denmark, Italy, Bulgaria, the Serbs) tried to save as many Jews as they could. In countries with a high incidence of long standing Jew hatred, there were some incredibly heroic and decent people, but a lot of the locals not only turned their backs while their neighbors were dragged off to the camps, in many cases ( Norway, Austria, France, Poland,the Baltic States, the Ukraine, Romania, Croatia for example) the natives were downright enthusiastic and actually helped round the Jews up and turn them over to the Nazis, even though they had a damned good idea of what was in store for them. In Poland, for example, Cardinal Glemp was actually telling the Poles that it was the Jews fault the Nazis were in Poland and that it was a good thing that the Nazis were getting rid of them.He was never disciplined in the slightest by the Vatican.

I remember an experience related by one woman's who survived the Holocaust as a little child (can you imagine experiencing that as a child?), noted Jewish speaker and author  Rebbetzin Jungries, who was rounded up by the Hungarian Arrow Cross militia with her family to be turned over to the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. As she and her family were being marched out of their apartment to the truck, she took her favorite doll with her, only to have it snatched away from her by one of her neighbors. When she started crying, this lovely woman told her "Shut up you dirty little Jew. You won't need this where you're going."

My point here is that many Europeans behaved with incredible cowardice and indecency. No matter what they pretended later, they pretty much knew what Hitler had in store for a bunch of innocent men, women and children whose only crime was that they were Jews, and they only thing they cared about was looking out for number one and dividing up any spoils that were left over.

The last Jews who were murdered in Europe as a result of the Holocaust were killed in Kielce, Poland, and by Poles, not Germans. They actually had the nerve to survive the camps and come back to try to reclaim their old homes.

You see, to a lot of Europeans, the Jews were, you know, a problem. A lot of them liked and approved of how the Nazis handled that problem, or at least had no particular concern about it. Afterwards, since the Nazis handled a lot of the dirty work and were able to be conveniently fingered as the sole culprits, many of these same Europeans could pretend they never heard or saw anything.

Europeans have always had a totally unjustified view of themselves as civilized, decent and humane, as opposed to, say, we loutish, brutal Americans. The Holocaust and their own cooperation with it gives the lie to that conceit. For a few years, while the memory was still fresh, there was at least a certain undercurrent of shame. The Holocaust and their enthusiastic cooperation at worst and their tacit acceptance at best made them look in the mirror and have to smell the excrement of their souls instead of being able to keep pretending it was perfume. They hated that, and harbored a deep resentment towards the Jews for for surviving as living witnesses to their worst moments and as a living  admonishment before G-d and man.

Virtually the only country in Europe that has ever attempted to deal with these feelings on a national level was Germany.

Over the years, a lot of that European resentment was conveniently transferred to a more socially acceptable target, the Jewish State, the Zionists. And it continues to remain a not so covert theme in Europe's media and academia, especially as the Holocaust survivors conveniently die off and it's easier to forget what happened, or even to deny that it happened at all.

That (along with the need to appease their growing Muslim populations) is where the 'anti-Zionism', the frequent comparison of Israel with the Nazis, the notions of a ' Palestinian Holocaust', the blood libel cartoons come from. It's why a lot of the Brits and others aren't all that upset at dropping teaching about the Holocaust, especially since they can blame it on Muslim sensibilities. It's their way of subconsciously (or not so subconsciously) saying to the world and to history, "See, look. We aren't so evil. Look at what the Jews are doing! Look at how evil those ZioNazis are! Besides if they were just out of the picture, the Muslims would be satisfied, we'd have peace and quiet and we could forget all about the whole thing anyway."

That's why a lot of Europeans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.And why it carries over in hatred and resentment towards Israel today, for being so inconsiderate as to continue to insist on surviving.

Ah, Socialism!!

France's Minister of Industry Arnaud Montebourg made the headlines this week by saying the following:

Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg, a member of the governing Socialist party, caused controversy last week when he said that the Indian company, which employs close to 20,000 people in France, should leave after it said it would have to close down a factory.

The French government announced on Thursday that it could nationalize the factory in question, with backing from an unnamed businessman.

The news raised the specter of the nationalizations of the early 1980s, which were instigated by Hollande’s predecessor Francois Mitterrand.

Montebourg told CNBC after a meeting with trade unions in Paris: “Barack Obama's nationalized. The Germans are nationalizing. All countries are nationalizing. I've also noticed the British nationalized 6 banks.”

What Monsieur Montebourg is talking about, of course, is Obama's nationalizing the financial services industry via the draconian controls of Dodd-Frank and of course GM, which was delivered to union ownership at a cost of a mere $80 billion that will not be recouped for decades, if at all.

Interesting that Montebourg easily recognizes what most of the American people and certainly the vast majority of the media have yet to admit...that he's a socialist and a redistributionist whose heading us towards European socialism.

And Europe is doing simply splendidly on that path, mais oui?

The unemployment rate continued its steady rise, reaching 11.7% in October, up from 11.6% the month before and 10.4% a year ago.

A further 173,000 were out of work across the single currency area, bringing the total to 18.7 million.

Royal Bank of Scotland's Alberto Gallo: "The real issue is we're in a two-speed Europe"

The respective fortunes of northern and southern Europe diverged further. In Spain, the jobless rate rose to 26.2% from 25.8% the previous month, and in Italy it rose to 11.1% from 10.8%.

In contrast, unemployment in Germany held steady at 5.4% of the labour force, while in Austria it fell from 4.4% to just 4.3%.

Our president, of course, is following the policies of southern Europe..massive spending and borrowing, high taxes to discourage economic activity, zero austerity in the name of 'growth' (which actually means government make-work hiring) crippling energy policies and large roadblocks of governmental bureaucracy to stifle business and job creation.

In addition, of course, we have the U.S. military to pay for and a mush larger problem with illegal immigration and its attendant social welfare costs Europe doesn't have, at least not anything near to America's.

If this headlong plunge to insolvency isn't stopped, there's only one way it can end. And it won't be pretty.

Merkel 'Evolving' On Spanish Bailout Deal Without Austerity Program Attached

German Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to be caving in:

A deal is in the works that would allow Spain to recapitalize its stricken banks with aid from its European partners but avoid the embarrassment of having to adopt new economic reforms imposed from the outside, German officials say.

While Berlin remains firm in its rejection of Spain's calls for Europe's rescue funds to lend directly to its banks, the officials said that if Madrid put in a formal aid request, funds could flow without it submitting to the kind of strict reform program agreed for Greece, Portugal and Ireland.

Instead, Spain would only have to agree to new conditions tied to the reform of its banking sector. Berlin is also exploring the possibility of funneling aid to Spain's Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring rescue mechanism (FROB) to reinforce the message that it is the country's banks and not its public finances which are at the root of its problems.

The evolving German stance on aid for Spain is the latest evidence that Chancellor Angela Merkel is adopting a more flexible approach to solving the euro zone's deepening debt crisis.

There are a few problems with this.

First of all, Merkel is going to have to somehow convince German taxpayers to go along with it.

Second, the amount of money requested is staggering, larger than any previous bailout. At current birthrates, Germany's newer generation of taxpayers is going to be far less than its current one, and Spain is even further behind in reproducing its present population. If a debt of 110% of Gross Domestic Product can't be paid off now by 100 Spaniards, it's highly unlikely that 30 Spaniards are going to be able to do it. Nor is it likely that 42 Germans are going to be able to continue to support the same level of largesse for the entire eurozone that 100 Germans do today,paying off long term debts that are essentially valueless at his point anyway, since they're based on a real estate and construction bubble that makes what happened in America look benign by comparison.

And third, Chancellor Merkle is going to be pinned down on the sofa and subjected to what I call the gang bang rationale.."hey, you did it for him, you can do it for me, so just lay back and enjoy it."

The Greeks, the Portuguese and the Irish have already been subjected to severe austerity packages for past bailouts, and those programs, if you can call it that, are still ongoing. After seeing Spain get even more money for doing absolutely nothing but threatening to leave the euro, they're going to want their austerity programs waived too..or else. And other countries in similar territory, like Italy, are going to want to pull the same thing.

Merkle and Germany would be far better off telling Spain (and Greece, for that matter) to get bent. Either that, or simply writing off their debts and taking the pain now while it's still manageable rather than spreading the infection throughout the eurozone.

To go back to the analogy I used the other day, it's a choice between amputation and learning to enjoy gangrene as it spreads throughout the remaining healthy parts of the body.

Athens On Fire

Under severe pressure by Germany and the other EU nations, the Greek parliament finally agreed to the harsh austerity program the EU demanded in exchange for yet another €130bn bail out:

( Greek PM)Mr Papademos warned earlier the €3.3bn package of cuts was “the only alternative to a catastrophic default ... that would force Greece, sooner or later, to leave the euro.”

“The social cost of this package is limited in comparison with the social and economic disaster that would follow if it is not adopted,” he said.

Lawmakers voted 199-74 in for the cutbacks, but with heavy dissent among the two main coalition members.

In response, the Socialists expelled 22 members and the conservatives expelled 21 lawmakers, reducing their majority in the 300-seat parliament from 236 to 193.

Intense rioting broke out in Athens as the new of the vote circulated, and has reportedly spread to the islands of Corfu and Crete, the northern city of Thessaloniki and towns in central Greece, the worst hit town in that part of the country being Volos, where the town hall and other buildings were burned to the ground.

Among other things, the new cuts call for cutting one in five civil service jobs and slashing Greece's minimum wage by more than 20 per cent.In exchange, as part of the new bail out package Greek bond holders agree to take a 'haircut' of 70 per cent of the value of their holdings.It will be years before anyone buys Greek bonds again.

In Athens,crowds of rioters set bonfires in front of parliament and only squads of dozens of riot police formed lines kept them from making a run on the building. The police fired fired dozens of tear gas volleys at rioters, who attacked the police with firebombs and chunks of marble broken off the fronts of luxury hotels, banks and department stores.

Masked rioters also attacked a police station with firebombs and stones.

Streets all over Athens were strewn with stones, smashed glass and burnt wreckage, while terrified passers-by sought refuge in hotel lounges and cafeterias.Looting was wide spread as shop windows were smashed, with the police occupied in guarding Parliament,City Hall and other public buildings.

Money quote from one rioter via Twitter: "I hate the deal. Maybe if I wreck this city I can get a job in construction building it up again."

Stockholm: Muslims Get Special McDonald's Ramadan deal

"Now its Ramadan also at McDonald's in Rissne (Stockholm suburb)! When the sun goes down, you can buy a ramadan-menu for only 90 kronor”

Via Vlad Tepes

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Soccer Dad's Mideast Media Sampler 07/26/11‏

My old pal DG, formerly of the unfortunately deceased blog Soccer Dad gives us a daily sampler of noteworthy pieces and worthy reads on the Middle East out today:


1) The Times on Norway

There are no words strong enough to condemn the massacres in Norway committed by Anders Behring Breivik. He is an evil man.

Still there's something troubling about the coverage of this evil by the New York Times.

The title of the news report says a lot, Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.

This is a key argument of the article:

Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”
“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”

The reporter, Soctt Shane got an expert to say (in sequence) 1) you can't tie the actions Breivik to the ideas in the anti-Islamist blogs but 2) if you use their own standards, then their writings did indeed encourage Breivik. In other words, in a rather roundabout way, Shane got his expert to confirm the thesis of the article.


Contrast that with how Isabel Kershner dealt with the subject of Palestinian incitement following the Fogel murders:

Yossi Kuperwasser, a retired Israeli general given responsibility by the Israeli government for monitoring Palestinian incitements to violence and to hatred of Israel, said in a telephone interview that while Mr. Abbas and the Palestinian Authority prime minister, Salam Fayyad, had been careful in their words, “they too encourage an atmosphere of terrorism.”
He noted, for example, that a senior Abbas aide had paid a call to the families of three Fatah militants killed by the Israeli military, conveying condolences from Mr. Abbas. Israel held the three responsible for the fatal shooting of a rabbi in the West Bank in December 2009. In addition, Israeli officials note, streets, summer camps and youth tournaments in the Palestinian Authority have been named for people who committed terrorist attacks.
The new focus on incitement against Israel, together with Israeli dissatisfaction over the Palestinian response to the brutal attack, seemed to pose a question about the Israeli government’s readiness to deal with Mr. Abbas as a serious peace partner — even though Mr. Abbas and Mr. Fayyad are widely considered moderates who have repeatedly said they would never resort to violence.

Instead of making the case that Palestinian incitement leads to terror, Kershner allows the Israelis to make the case. Then she inserts herself into the debate arguing that 1) incitement is a means Israel uses to avoid making a deal with the Palestinians and 2) even if it's it true Abbas has nothing to do with it. Of course, given that much of the Palestinian incitement takes place in the official media or official mosques of the PA, it really doesn't matter what Abbas utters when microphones are on, his government is promoting the incitement. Of course, unlike Shane this week, Kershner portrays the effects of Palestinian incitement as non-existent.


The other thing that's missing from Shane's report is any reason the anti-Jihadist bloggers might feel as they do.


A quick search of the New York Times website, shows that since January 1, 2009, there has been precisely one article that contained both the words "Malmo" and the word "Jews" in it. And it was a letter to the editor written by Abraham Foxman of the ADL, Antisemitism in Sweden.

The Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism has also lamented that “prejudice against Jews is spreading under a very thin veneer” of anti-Israel activity. Riots greeted an Israeli tennis team at a Davis Cup match in Malmo, whose mayor said (on another occasion), “We accept neither Zionism nor anti-Semitism,” equating Jewish national self-determination with the oldest form of bigotry in the world.

Yet Malmo has been in the news, because the increased antisemitism has been pushing Jews to leave. And one of the driving forces of the antisemitism have been the Muslim immigrants. As Haaretz reports:

But Per Gudmundson, chief editorial writer for Svenska Dagbladet, a leading Swedish newspaper, is critical of politicians who blame anti-Semitic actions on Muslim living conditions. He said that these politicians offer “weak excuses” for Muslim teenagers accused of anti-Semitic crimes. “Politicians say these kids are poor and oppressed, and we have made them hate. They are, in effect, saying the behavior of these kids is in some way our fault,” he said.
According to Gudmundson, some immigrants from Muslim countries come to Sweden as hardened anti-Semites.

The article in Ha'aretz also points to the lack of assimilation of the immigrants.



The anti-Islamist sentiment, while often harsh, does not exist in a vacuum. Instead of providing the full context, the Times makes it seem that it is only white people who are capable of being prejudiced.

The New York Times has demonstrated that it believes that incitement leads to murder (when it's politically convenient to do so) except when it doesn't. It also refuses to acknowledges the challenges and, sometimes, the threats that go along with the growing Muslim population in Europe, preferring instead to portray those who see the problems as ignorant bigots. Both positions are hypocritical and revealing of the biases that are regularly on display at the Times.


If the Times news reporting is one sided; columnist Roger Cohen has completely gone off the deep end. Cohen who is infamous for defending the official antisemitism of Iran, now sees the Islamaphobia of Europe and declares it just as loathsome as antisemitism. In Breivik and his Enablers, Cohen concludes:

Nothing, however, can excuse the widespread condoning of an anti-Muslim racism once reserved for the Jews of Europe. Not on the weekend when Amy Winehouse, a Jewish girl from East London whose artistry would once have been dismissed by a racist and murderous European right as degenerate “cosmopolitan” trash, died. A good way to remember her is finally to confront the latest iteration of a European bigotry that kills.

This is sick and tasteless. Cohen conjures up phantoms of antisemitism so he can use the recently deceased singer to "show" the dangers of bigotry.


2) The demographic time bomb


A familiar trope of Thomas Friedman and other critics of Israel is that Israel will soon be outnumber in the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Yet according to David Goldman, population trends are changing. (via Daily Alert)

• Most of the phantom population, the report argues, comes from births that never occurred: The Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics “projected that the number of births in the Territories would total almost 908,000 for the seven-year period from 1997 to 2003. Yet, the actual number of births documented by the PA Ministry of Health for the same period was significantly lower at 699,000, or 238,000 fewer births than had been forecast by the PCBS.”

• Jewish births rose from 96,000 in the year 2000 to 125,000 in 2010, while Arab births fell slightly over the same period – from about 40,781 to 40,750, according to a study by Yaakov Faitelson at the Institute for Zionist Strategies. The percentage of students in the Arab educational system out of all Israel’s total first grade student body will decrease from 29.1% in 2007 to only 24.3% in 2016 and 22.5% in 2020.
  

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Oslo Killer Breivik's 'Far Right Christian Fundamentalist' Label Cracks - The Mystery of The Two Facebook Profiles

The narrative of Anders Behring Breivak as a 'far right Christian fundamentalist' continues to unravel.

Originally, the killer assured the police through his attorney that he had worked alone, something I was sure had to be bogus because of the number of casualties on Utøya Island, the fact that someone had to provide hands on training to Breivik on making fertilizer bombs and the fact that witnesses reported that at least on Utøya Island, there was a second shooter.

All of a sudden, Breivik has a new story. Now, he claims to have been part of an organization with "cells all over Europe", very convenient for the media narrative and for forces on the Left seeking to use this for their political advantage. All of a sudden, he's not a lone wolf wacko anymore.

However, there's definitely new evidence he wasn't alone in this, and that Breivik was deliberately painted with the 'far right Christian fundamentalist' tag.

Simple computer forensics provide us with two interesting screen shots. As soon as Breivik's identity became public, people began looking up his original Facebook page in Norwegian, which vanished within minutes. It was replaced by a second Facebook profile in English that appears to have been embellished and deliberately altered to emphasize that Breivak was motivated by his “Christian conservative” beliefs.

In short, the Facebook profile and Breivik's statements about being part of an 'organization' are exactly made to order for a Leftist smear designed to shut down their political opposition - and to take the heat off of Europe's Islamists.

One thing we do know. Breivik obviously did have accomplices. Whomever deleted his original, far more moderate Facebook page in Norwegian and substituted the 'far right, fundamentalist Christian' page in English had access to his account and made the change while Breivik was still in custody.

Who were the accomplices? That can best be answered by the old Latin question, 'cui bono' - who benefits? Who gains from Anders Behring Breivik being painted as a member of a shadowy far right Christian terrorist organization?

Who ever it is, it certainly isn't Christians or conservatives. And we will eventually find out.

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The Oslo Killings And Anders Behring Breivik: The Ultimate False Flag?

The death toll in the Oslo terror attacks stands at 76, with at least 68 people reported dead so far from the shooting attack when a gunman opened fire at a summer camp on Utøya Island and 7 reported deaths from coordinated bomb blasts that took place in central Oslo near the government quarter in Regjeringskvartalet.

The killer at Utøya has been identified as a Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik, 32 who was charged over both attacks. According to the police, he surrendered when they approached him.

Given the sophisticated planning behind the attacks and the coordinated timing, a couple of my sources who are familiar with these matters tell me that this was almost certainly a group effort. I'd say it's virtually a certainty.

The suspect's lawyer said that Breivik admitted responsibility for the attacks, which he described as "atrocious" but "necessary". He also originally claimed he worked alone.

This man reportedly bought six tons of fertilizer and constructed sophisticated, remotely detonated explosives with them. These are not the kind of devices one can learn to construct on the Internet; hands on training or assistance in the bombings from people who've had that training is necessary. Where did Breivik receive it?

Because fertilizer bombs have been used before in some high profile terrorist bombings, most merchants in western countries would report a purchase that large from someone they didn't know to the authorities. Did they do so in this instance? And if they did, what did the authorities do with the information?

Most interesting is how Breivik is being tagged as a 'right wing, Christian fundamentalist' There are no such groups in Norway with any history of violence, nor does Breivik have any major, long-time connection with any of them.

The whole thing just appears too perfect, right down to the obvious manipulation of his Facebook page. His original Facebook page, in Norwegian, appeared only days before the killings, and paints a portrait of a moderate conservative whose heroes were Winston Churchill and Max Manus, the leader of the Norwegian anti-Nazi resistance in WW II.

Oddly enough, within minutes of his identity being made public, that page vanished and was replaced by a page in English with far more radical postings and the tag words 'Christian' and 'Conservative' inserted. That's what publications the New York Times and their political ilk are gleefully using to label Breivik as a 'far right, fundamentalist Christian'. The Facebook manipulation also proves that Breivik wasn't in this alone, It was done by someone else who had access to his account while he was in custody.

In fact, his Facebook page and profile appears as if it was deliberately meant to deceive anyone looking into his background. Ditto with his 1500 page 'manifesto', which appears to have whole chunks cut and pasted from Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's similar 'manifesto'.

It's an obvious paper trail, constructed after the fact. And in Europe especially, there are a great many people happy to have a European 'Timothy McVeigh' to take the spotlight off of the far more prevalent and dangerous Islamist terrorism and provide them with an excuse to smear their political opponents.

Actually, McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing may be a closer fit than anyone realizes, when one does some research and looks at the Middle East connections to the Oklahoma City bombing and to Ramzy Youseff, who used the same m.o. and equipment adopted in the Oklahoma City bombings in the first World Trade Center bombing.

Al-Qaeda, Hizb-al-Tahrir and the Muslim Brotherhood have all said a great deal in the post 9/11 environment about the desirability of recruiting what al-Qaeda's leader Ayman Zawahiri has termed 'white moors' - white, European Christians who have converted to Islam - to conduct terrorist operations.

This has actually happened before in Europe, and I noted at the time I thought we could expect more `white Muslims' to be a part of jihad. In America for instance, we have a number of American blacks who have been engaged in Islamist terrorist activities, and we also have al-Qaeda senior operative Adam Yehiye Gadahn, AKA Adam Pearlman, AKA `Azzam the American'.

Riddle me this, if you please - what if Anders Behring Breivik is a radicalized Norwegian Muslim who was groomed and trained to perform this mission, and is utilizing the Muslim doctrine of taqqiya which permits a Muslim to deceive non-believers to advance Islam? And what if he was then trained to pose as a 'far Right, Christian fundamentalist' to get authorities in Europe to take their eye off of Islamist groups and crack down on thus far non-violent anti-Jihadist groups? If you were planning an Islamist terrorist operation, can you think of a more likely or desirous scenario?

Especially since Breivik has now changed his story and is talking about being a member of a shadowy far right 'organization' with several cells?

I expect Breivik to go to court and mouth a great many of the expected far Right talking points. And perhaps that's really whom he is. But usually people this leave a long trail of statements, associations and activities, like white supremacist Buford O. Furrow, Jr., the man who shot up the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, California in 1999 with a semiautomatic weapon.

Breivik is obviously a disturbed fanatic. But I wonder if we're going to see a real investigation of who Anders Behring Breivik really is? Will we see an investigation of his travel record, his associations, his friends, any possible romantic relationships, his finances and business dealings if any? Have his phone records and e-mails been checked? Where did he learn to fire an automatic weapon? Why did the Islamist group "Helpers of the Global Jihad" post a message claiming credit and then suddenly withdraw it? Witnesses reported that at least on Utøya Island, there was a second shooter. Who was he?

These are all questions that need to be asked, and it remains to be seen if there will be a thorough and honest investigation to find the answers or if the 'far Right, Christian fundamentalist' narrative is going to be pushed regardless of whether it's true or not. There are a great many figures in the Leftist establishment who are only too eager to do so.

Which brings us to the ultimate issue, best summarized by the old Latin question, 'cui bono' - who benefits? Who gains from Anders Behring Breivik being painted as a member of a shadowy far right Christian terrorist organization?

Whoever it is, it certainly isn't Christians or conservatives.

But after the Narrative has made it's way through the usual channels, we will undoubtedly find out. And we may just find out that this was the ultimate False Flag operation.

UPDATE: * The death toll has now been revised to 76.

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Pat Condell 'Let's Blame the Jews'

Some words of wisdom and no holds barred straight talk on Jews, Muslims, Europe and Jew hatred.

(hat tip and a commendation to long tome Joshua's Army member Joyce C.)

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Europe - Governments Seize Private Pensions To Cover Budget Shortfalls

As you know by now, the aim of President Barack Hussein Obama and his Democrat allies, among other things, is to transform America into a European style welfare state, AKA 'a Social Democracy'.

Ironically, that's happening at the same time some European governments are realizing what a horrendous idea that was in the first place and are having to take unprecedented measures to stay afloat.

One of those measures, for some countries, involves essentially stealing private pension funds in order to pave over budget shortfalls.

In Hungary for instance, the government told its citizens that they could either turn over Their individual retirement savings ( estimated at about $14 million) to the state, or lose the right to the basic state pension while still having to pay contributions for it.

Bulgaria did something similar, trying to transfer $300 million of private early retirement savings to the state pension fund. The government backed down after the unions protested, but still instituted a partial plan.


In Ireland, the government simply 'borrowed' 4 billion Euros from the National Pension Reserve Fund to rescue the country's banks..and last November, the remaining 2.5 billion in the fund was seized as part of the EU bailout.

France took a different route, using an old accounting trick to get access to the private pensions..the one called robbing Peter to pay Paul. In November, the French parliament decided to use 33 billion Euros from the national reserve pension fund FRR to reduce the short-term pension deficit. That allows the long term retirement savings intended for the years 2020-2040 will be used earlier for the years 2011-2024. Which of course means that the French government can spend the saved up resources on other purposes now and will let 2020 take care of itself...when it will be another French government's problem!

Lest you delude yourselves that this is going to be confined to the antics of foreigners across the pond, rest assured that President Obama and his political soulmates are eagerly taking notes, which is why we heard noises earlier about an American Value Added Tax (VAT), something that has politicians literally drooling at the prospect of automatically stealing millions of your hard earned dollars without the necessity of having to take any responsibility for raising taxes at election time.

And they have an additional wedge here in the US for grabbing onto your pension funds. Some of the EU government pension funds actually had money in them. But in the US, ever since Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats first allowed the Social Security trust fund to be accessed to pay for the War on Poverty,that money has been treated as general revenue and is now essentially one huge IOU backed by government paper.

A government grab of private pensions could be sold as necessary to lower the deficit, or to keep old people from starving or going without healthcare because Social Security and Medicare are bankrupt. And of course, the Federal government's poor management, spendthrift ways and outright theft will never be mentioned.

Some of the states, especially the Blue ones with huge unfunded public employee union pension mandates would absolutely adore this as well, since it would get them off the hook and be a bailout without actually having the odor of one.The only people to really get hit would be the ones who took these jobs in the first place with the idea that the money being put aside would actually go to fund their retirement.

Suckers.

Besides, after all, we have to spread the wealth around just like Chairman Obama said, don't we?

Watch carefully what's going on in DC-land. And if and when this comes up, be prepared to scream bloody murder at your representatives in Congress.

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NATO, Jewish Community in Belgium Was targeted For Mega-Attack

The Jewish community in Belgium was targeted for a massive attack along the lines of Madrid or Mumbai (link is in Dutch) and a number of jihadis have been arrested by Belgian Authorities.

The suspects had made a list of key targets, including the NATO headquarters in Evere and NATO forces, a large sporting event and synagogues, schools and Jewish community centers. Last week CNN also quoted a senior European anti-terror expert that the Jewish community was been a target.

Secretary-General of the Forum of Jewish Organizations, Diane Keyser, says the Jewish community has the fullest confidence in the judiciary. "This action, in which suspects were arrested, also proves that the police were able to intercept the threats and take appropriate action."

According to the Dutch paper Het Parool, a Saudi national living in France financed the attack, Several Belgian and Dutch Muslims were arrested along with a German suspect.

The group was linked to what's being described as a fundamentalist website, and the police had taps on a number of suspected phones, which helped them roll up the cell when several conversations indicated an attack might be imminent.

(hat tip, Yochanan)

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Major Anti-Islamist Speech By Austrian MP

More evidence that things are turning around in Europe - if slowly.

Here, Austrian MP Ewald Stadler calls for Turkish ambassador Ecvet Tezcan to Austria to be declared persona non grata after Tezcan demanded that the Austrian Home Secretary 'stop interfering in the integration process ' and accusing Austria of 'Islamophobia.'

Based on the response to MP Stadler's remarks,I get the feeling a lot of his fellow Austrians feel as he does about their newly acquired Muslim 'guests'.

(hat tip, Carl)

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The Swiss Vote To Deport Immigrants Convicted Of Crimes

( video cheerfully swiped from the Baron at Gates of Vienna, with an additional thanks to Steen for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling)

The Swiss People's Party, who were behind the successful referendum to ban minarets have scored another victory.

Foreigners convicted of serious crimes such as rape, murder and robbery will now be immediately expelled from Switzerland, presumably after their prison sentences.

52.9 percent of voters and a majority of Switzerland’s cantons supported the Swiss People’s Party initiative calling for the expulsion of foreigners convicted of crimes ranging from murder and rape to drug dealing and social security fraud.

While the linked article doesn't state it ( it is, after all, from the New York Times) the term 'foreigners' is a euphemism for Muslims, who make up the vast majority of perpetrators with foreign backgrounds.

Christian Blocher, the People’s Party leader, presented figures during the campaign showing that while foreigners make up 22 percent of the resident population, they account for 54 percent of convictions for grievous bodily harm and 62 percent of robbery convictions. “Prisons do not stop crimes,” he said. “The only way to go about it is to force them to leave the country.

The center-Right Swiss People's Party has a fairly hard line on immigration, law and order and Islamism and came out of the 2007 elections as Switzerland’s largest political party, with 29 percent of the popular vote.

The current referendum could be test run for the general election next year.

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European History -10 Centuries In Five Minutes

Courtesy of the Centennia Historical Atlas and the NRO.

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